“The goal of my site is to feature what i think of as “folk music”, which is music made by people who are trying to get by leading lives in our modern world who love to express themselves through music”

That sentiment resonates with us here at WTD, and it should with you too. Folk songs don’t require banjos and fiddles, it’s something a little deeper than that. You’d be a fool not to follow that link above and spend all evening trawling through the (sometimes rough) gems that get posted on a regular basis.

But! This post isn’t all about singing the praises of The Modern Folk Music of America. What I really want to tell you about is that J. Moss, the guy who runs the site and Practice Records, also makes music of his own – under the moniker The Modern Folk. The last six months has seen three releases from The Modern Folk, each of which represents a slightly different approach to making DIY music. Surround Me is an album of gutsy, lo-fi garage rock, recorded in warehouse spaces with a drummer and everything turned up to eleven, whereas Leather Jacket is much more reserved, recorded at home with the aid of an “ancient” drum machine. The album has this great swaggering, half-soaked coolness about it, all mumbling vocals and lazy guitars – basically exactly how a record called Leather Jacket should sound. The final release is American Sewer, which was reportedly recorded on a cellphone under a bridge in Portland in the space of just two hours. It kinda sounds like it too, all blown-out rumbling blues rock guitars and yelpy vocals, the sort of thing they play in bars frequented by tough guys (I’d imagine).

This is bona fide DIY music. Don’t let the lo-fi tag deceive you, a lot of hard work has gone into these recordings, right down to the artwork, which Moss produced himself. Check out a few of my current favourite tracks below:

You can get each of the releases on a pay-what-you-want basis via The Modern Folk’s Bandcamp page. There are also plans for physical releases so keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground!

The post The Modern Folk appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Joplin Rice is a musician from Lexington, Kentucky who makes personal bedroom folk meets lo-fi indie pop. His latest (and first ever physical) release is called Low Hum, an album which is at once pensively miserable and unhurriedly easygoing, something heightened by Rice’s tragically wry way of writing about life’s woes. Take for example ‘Lucky Man’, with its cool and laidback guitars and lyrics such as “I’m lit up like a burning car”, or the acoustic strum of ‘Perfect Coils’ in which he sings, “Hating myself now just ain’t the same“.

He’s capable of changing things up too. ‘Coffee’ is a fuzzed-out rocker which tells a sad little story of seeing a lost love around the town with someone new:

“I saw you buying records with your boyfriend
I just hid behind the shelf, started crying to myself.
I saw you drinking coffee, you were laughing
Was he telling you a joke? Did you see me leave alone?

Whereas ‘Haunt Me’ is more towards the folk side of the spectrum and centres on a pretty morbid question, “Would you haunt me if you died today?”, and finale ‘Parking Lot Waltz’ is a shuffling lo-fi rock song, with lines that bleed into one another, creating a stream-of-conciousness style vocal delivery – e.g. “i blow smoke back home i take ticking time bomb tambourine crescendoes endocrine releases into shaky muddy puddle people”. 

Low Hum is being released by Practice Records, a label run by the good folks at The Modern Folk Music of America, which is one of the best music sites around and a champion of home-recorded, DIY music like this. You can get the album on limited edition cassette via Practice Records or as a pay-what-you-want download via the Joplin Rice Bandcamp page. Take note that if you pay $5 or more you’ll receive a bonus EP of demos that didn’t make the album.

P.S. Why not dig into the Practice Records back catalogue while you’re at it?

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